Rahul Gandhi has maintained a staunch silence on the brutal attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh – an issue that every opposition leader in the Lok Sabha should have spoken out on, especially after he quickly tweeted congratulations to Muhammad Yunus on his swearing-in as head of the interim government of Bangladesh.
All he could muster was a lukewarm hope for the restoration of “peace and normality.”
It is not that the Congress Party shies away from commenting on foreign conflicts and their victims.
Just recently, Priyanka Gandhi unleashed a strident protest against Israel’s bombing of Gaza. Rahul Gandhi took up the cue and called the bombing a “crime against humanity” in his anti-Israel tirade on Twitter. In fairness, the Congress leader did mention Hamas in his tweet but could not bring himself to label it a terrorist organisation.
The truth is clear: Congress deliberately remains silent when Islamists are the perpetrators. And especially when Hindus are the victims.
This is precisely why the Congress opposes the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). The party’s official argument is that the law “discriminates” against Muslims, which is an obvious lie. The real problem for the Congress and its Islamist allies is that the CAA recognizes and justifies the suffering of the Hindu minority in India’s predominantly Muslim neighbours.
That is precisely the problem with Congress in this case.
It refuses to stand up for the Hindus of Bangladesh because doing so would mean facing the reality that the Muslim majority population has committed atrocities against the Hindu minority – and its supporters are desperately trying to cover up these crimes.
Why else would the so-called fact-checkers tirelessly analyze every obscure story about the persecution of Hindus in Bangladesh, fretting over minor inaccuracies? Their goal is clearly to tell the story that these brutal attacks were either exaggerated or, better yet, never happened. This narrative fits the Congress agenda perfectly. And let’s not pretend we don’t know who these so-called fact-checkers are really loyal to.
Of course, the fact that Bangladesh’s new home minister has offered a theatrical apology for his failure to protect Hindus with folded hands is just another inconvenient detail that is being conveniently ignored.
An admission of atrocities against Hindus in Bangladesh would destroy the victim narrative that Congress and its allies have for decades fed to the Muslim community, and which they have readily accepted. An admission that Muslims are the perpetrators in this case would expose the carefully constructed victim narrative that benefits both the Muslim community and Congress.
Such an admission would not only destroy that narrative but also alienate important sections of its electoral base, and the party is unwilling to take that risk, even if it means ignoring the suffering of Hindus in Bangladesh.
Should not the Congress have taken a leaf out of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s comment on the caretaker government in Dhaka, in which he called for the protection of the country’s minorities, including Hindus?
It is not too much to expect the main opposition party to share the government’s stance on key foreign policy objectives – including ensuring the welfare of the Hindu minority in a predominantly Muslim district.
Both the Congress Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party have done this in the past, although they have taken different approaches. But perhaps the Congress Party does not see ensuring the welfare of Hindus as a responsibility of the Indian state, unlike its clearly defined stance on Gaza. Priorities are so subjective, after all.
The idea that this public expression could actually put pressure on the Bangladesh army and the interim government in Dhaka to stop these attacks and punish the perpetrators is, of course, only an afterthought for the Congress Party – if the thought even occurs to them.
